Covering All Bases

So there is a distinct possibility I MAY have a second roommate moving in. Maybe. I'm kind of excited about this to be quite honest with all of you.

Anyway, it's laundry day week for me. And by that I mean I've pretty much neglected washing my clothes for weeks and I'm working through the stuff I don't normally wear anymore. Given the fact that I take the more European approach to clothes (wear them more than once if they aren't actually dirty), this means I haven't done laundry in a while (save a load of undergarments 2 weeks ago).

Most of you probably already read FB's blog Fabulously Broke, but if you haven't sauntered over to her other blog The Everyday Minimalist I'd suggest you check it out. She did a post a couple days ago about how people dry their clothes around the world that got me waxing nostalgic about my university days. When I moved into my apartment I bought one of those folding drying racks from IKEA to hang my delicates to dry on. It was under $20 at the time, and was one of the smartest purchases I made during that timeframe.

Now, I grew up in a rural area, on an acreage, where you get dirty looking after the animals/gardening. My dad is a mechanic, so you can be sure he gets pretty dirty too. We had one of those extra large washers that advertised it would wash 20 pairs of jeans at once, along with the matching dryer. You could do a lot of laundry in my parent's washer. Imagine my horror at realizing that my apartment only had 1 tiny washer and dryer per floor (Shall we say 3-4 pairs of jeans?), and that it would cost me $2.50 a load to wash, and $2 a load for ~25 minutes in the dryer (plus more for extra drying time).

W...T...F...

It didn't take much mental math to figure out that I wasn't going to be using that washer and dryer. I just flat out refused, both for the sake of my wallet and out of principle.

I spent my entire 3rd year of university washing my clothes in my bath tub, and hanging them to dry on every surface I could find in my apartment. I lived alone, so I really didn't really have to worry about pissing off my roommates doing that. The only thing that caused me grief was my bedding, which I periodically took down to the laundry mat. I stuffed as much clothing into those industrial washers as possible to save myself the tub washing, but that only happened when I had a load of sheets to wash.

By 4th year I did pay to use the apartment machines occasionally for convenience sake; senior design projects sure do know how to take the wind out of you. But, I still tub washed a lot of my clothes.

Fast forward a few more years and I'm now paying to have clothes dry cleaned. Why? Because I bought a tonne of clothes for work that were dry clean only.

That was smart. S-M-R-T....

I had been cursing the cost of cleaning my clothes, when I looked down at my jeans and realized they also had a dry clean only tag.

Seriously???? It's 98% cotton and 2% lycra! Since when is cotton dry clean only?!?

Seeing as my jeans had already been unceremoniously thrown in the washer and *gasp* didn't shrink, it got me thinking about my other clothes. Why are they dry clean only? What are they made of?

Cotton. Wool. Lycra. Cashmere. Polyester.

Funny, none of those fabrics in and of themselves are dry clean only materials. Cold water hand wash sure, but dry clean? Nah. From what I understand cashmere actually does worse at the dry cleaner's than it does in hand washing.

My wallet hurts thinking about the fact that it's been duped.

I have one dress that I bought in Paris which reads "Special Dry Clean Only". From what I gathered (googled) that meant it was to be sent to "trusted" dry cleaners only. That dress will continue to be dry cleaned.

The rest? You guys have a date with my tub, ASAP. Enjoy the cold bath.

Waiting For Interest to Work In My Favour

My annual mortgage statement came in the mail last night. I'm glad, I was beginning to wonder where it had gotten off to. That was right about where the glad part ended. There is something rather unfortunate about paying almost $17,000 onto a loan and only seeing the balance improve by about $4,500. It's like having one of those payday loans, only it has a nicer name.

Hey you, yeah you Interest, I've got something to say to you: Bite Me.

I have the sudden urge to empty my wallet into my lump sum payment jar right now. In fact, I'll probably do that as soon as I'm done typing here.

The envelope wasn't entirely filled with suck though. Apparently my mortgage provider is starting a website where I can go to check my balance, review my statements, change my payment frequency or amount, or make lump sum payments. That last one makes me happy, it will make the process much easier come the end of the year.

Home sweet home. One day you'll be all mine.

Price Check Please?

For some reason my back and neck are really sore today. Massage is covered by my insurance (up to a certain dollar amount), so I figured I'd book an appointment on pay day (so I can pay cash).

I looked up one of the spas near my house online, checked their prices, and then called to book an appointment. This was the tail end of the conversation.

*booking appointment, inquired about price*

Spa: "That will be $110"

Me: "Your website says $55-$75"

Spa: "That's the American price, our spa isn't listed on there"

Me: "I looked you up on the Canadian site, and they have different services listed based on the locations so I know it's not standard pricing."

Spa: "But that is the American price. We're globally owned though, so after the exchange rate it comes out to the same price."

Me: "The dollar is at par"

*long pause*

Spa: "It is right now"

*It has been for, ummm, quite a while, and is projected to be for some time in the future*

Me: "Thank you for your time, but my insurance won't cover that cost."

I'm glad I double checked the price before I hung up the phone, that would have been a VERY unpleasant surprise if I hadn't. Needless to say, I'm irritated. Granted, that could also be due to my back being sore. Has anyone else run into this lately? If so, how did you handle it?

Retirement Frustration

As I mentioned a while back, I've started up my retirement contributions again. They're small mind you, but they are there. When I received my last pay raise the entire raise went into retirement savings. No pain no gain? That seems to me like a gain without the pain to me. What really spurred me into action was an e-mail from my employer saying that they were re-instituting part of their contribution matching program. The program had been cut during the downturn as a cost savings measure. Better to keep more people employed with most of their benefits than keep fewer people employed with all of the benefits. For employees working at the company for 1-5 years, they would match up to 2% of your pay, providing you put at least that much into the account. My last raise was 3%, so I met that requirement. My 1 year anniversary was earlier this month, so as of this pay period I'll be receiving their contributions as well.

When I signed up for the contribution matching, they had a little section on the form where you put down which funds you wanted the money dispersed between. I selected a couple funds with low MERs (management expense ratio - the percentage of your fund that goes to them every year), and submitted the form. A couple weeks later I received a letter from the company holding the mutual funds, saying that the funds I selected were not available in my program. I'm not entirely sure if it's because I didn't have the minimum balances for the funds, or if they're not available to my company's plan? They had another form asking for different funds, which I never sent back to them. The money has been sitting in the account making whatever their interest rate for cash is (super low).

Not having the cash in an actual fund isn't going to stop me from getting my employer's contribution, so I've been just letting it sit there. A 67% straight return is better than nothing in the short term.

The reason why I didn't select one of their other funds is because they have absolutely ridiculous MERs (2.5%-3% was common, and even higher). What's really frustrating is that they don't tell you that when they send you the paperwork to fill out.  I received another form this week, with a list of mutual funds again. They list the Gross Annualized Rate of Return for the last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, but no other information. Besides the fact that you can't predict the future returns based on the past, the Gross ARR is meaningless. If anything, I'd wan't to see the Net ARR. There would be a lot more negatives on this sheet if they did show that, that much I can promise you. It's frustrating that they don't show you the fees, they just mention in small print that you can contact them or find them online.

Grrrrr.

So, for the time being, I'm leaving my money in cash. I'll let it accumulate for a while and see if the other funds open up for me. If they don't, I'll probably just let the money build up and then periodically make a bulk transfer from it to my other institution which has cheaper fees. Better to get free employer money in a crappy account than not.

Going A Little Far Don't You Think?

Don't get me wrong, I love my Starbucks, but don't you think you're going a little too far?

http://www.everydaymoney.ca/2011/01/starbucks-adds-whopping-drink-size.html

A 31 fluid ounces of sweetened beverage? 3 ounces shy of 1 liter? Is this really necessary? No, it's not. It's enabling gluttony. Why not just make the people walk out the door with 2 grandes or 4 shorts? They're the same thing!

I've always been a bit miffed by the fact that Starbucks doesn't list it's short beverage prices on the menu. I was right ticked off when I heard they were planning to take the talls off the menu as well. Marketers know full well that people order what they can see, do most people even know that they have a short option?

The problem here is twofold. Larger sizes come at larger prices. Only show people the larger sizes, and more often than not that's what they'll buy. Waistlines get larger and wallets get smaller.

I like the small coffee shop concept of Starbucks. Yes, the charm has taken a considerable hit during it's global hyper-expansion, but it's still there. Competing with McDonalds and 7-11? Come on Starbucks, I'm disappointed in you.

Frugal Blog Bone to Pick

I like reading blogs that teach me a thing or two about how to stretch a buck. I even subscribe to the daily mailings of one such blog, and read the entire e-mail religiously. I love reading about how I can repurpose my items that would otherwise collect dust, use the last of my milk up before (or even after) it's starting to turn, and get new ideas for saving money on my utilities. However, I'm thinking about stopping. Specifically, I'm thinking about stopping reading the ones about how to save money on groceries. Why?

They aren't realistic.

Admittedly, most of these blogs come out of the US, and for where they are the prices they're writing about may be reasonable. For me however, they're not. For example, I recently took the unit prices from the recipes of one blog, and decided to compare them with my trip to the grocery store today:

Their prices:
2L organic milk - $1.28
1 dozen organic eggs - $0.90
1 lb butter - $0.80

My prices:
2L regular milk - $2.89
1 dozen regular eggs - $2.35
1 lb butter - $3.99 (On Sale)

This is not from a high end grocery store, it's from an average one. These are not top dollar prices, in fact they're store brand. These aren't organic items, they're regular ones. If you want to go organic the price for the milk hits $5-6, and about the same for the eggs. I'm scared to look at the price of organic butter. Don't even get me started on meat and vegetables, because they're worse than the staple prices.

The suggestion that going to the farmer's market will lower my grocery bill is laughable. If anything, it's more expensive than the store. I go for certain things so that I can support the local farmers, but $5 for a dozen eggs hurts my wallet. I would love to go 100% local, but it just isn't realistic. Ditto for organic. We don't have clearance stores and I've never seen a double or triple coupon day (ever, in my life). Most of the coupons I've come across have "cannot be combined with other offers" written on the bottom of them, and they are a pittance off of pre-made foods that I don't use.

So to all those bloggers out there who come up with solid meat and potato meals for under $5... good on you. To those bloggers/commenters who look down their noses at those of us that can't meet your arbitrary dollar figures.... bite me.